Quota

My youngest asked what else we were having for dinner. I told him veggies. He said,"veggies?! Veggies! I've had, like, a thousand veggies in my life! How many more is it gonna take?!". I guess he thought we were trying to meet a quota.

Poetic

Overheard my 7 year old say to his brother:

"A bunch of snot was unleashed, and came running out of my nose."

wow.

Berf

Earlier today I had a yogurt that my youngest wanted.

Youngest: "why do YOU get one and I don't?"

Me: "because I'm special."

Youngest: "why are YOU so special?!"

5th child: "because she's the mother that gave us birth!"
(which sounded like "berf")

Yes. I am the berf-er. The end.

Overheard

My younger boys are playing. I just heard:

"Feel my wrath!"

"No. YOU feel MY wrath!"

It's pretty darn fun to have kids in the house.

Mine!

I have been wishing for a cute bread box for awhile, and yesterday I found this lovely vintage one on etsy. I waited for the rest of the evening and then overnight to decide if I would buy it. I decided that it was one of those items that I would be sorry to have passed by, so now it has been purchased and I will be thinking about where it will go. Will I use it for bread? Maybe.....maybe not.

We Danced Til Our Feet Went Numb

My husband turned 40 on Sunday and I threw him a big bash, complete with DJ, lights, lots of guests, and tons of fun. Our theme was Dance Til Your Feet Go Numb, thanks to our love of Family Force 5's music. Here are a few photos from the evening:

Me (complete with hair that lost the battle with humidity) and my birthday man:

My husband and our daughter dancing together:

Several boys (the two kids on the outside aren't ours, the three in the middle are):

Our youngest, looking cool with his glow sticks. We had two talented photographers that caught some cool shots for us:

A Good Laugh

Heard from a crazy person lately?

This is tragically hilarious. Enjoy!

These Kids Keep Me Laughing

One of the things I love most about young children is their secure faith in how much they are adored.

The other night I was snuggling with my youngest and it went something like this:

A: I love you sooooooooooooo much!

Me: I love you too! I love you HUGE!

A: You are the best mommy in the whole wide world!

Me: You are the best six year old in the whole wide world! I am a lucky mom to have such a great kid as you.

A: Yep! I'm the best kid God ever made!

I laughed and laughed. What a delight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday while doing school with the kids something came up that caused my daughter to jokingly say, "That's because I'm mom's favorite!"

My youngest turned toward me urgently, saying, "WHAT?! I thought *I* was your favorite!!"

He was completely serious.

Summer Dance

Our church had a fun dance night earlier this month. It was an oldies theme, so we had a fun photo booth as well! Thought you all might enjoy seeing some of the pictures from it.

Me and my hubby:

Twistin' the night away:

A friend and I got the Dancing Queens awards, and trust me, we earned it!

Take 5 minutes to watch this

Have you seen this clever video to help guys stay out of the doghouse this holiday season? Go! Laugh! Share.

Addicted

Last night my sister turned me on to Mexican Train Dominoes. As Pioneer Woman would say, "Lawsie, mercy!" I'm a goner now. How I will ever get a shred of normal stuff done, I do not know. Any member of my family of origin can tell you that I have a mighty strong tendency to get hooked onto games that require ordering and arranging cards, tiles, numbers, and so forth. From approximately 1983-1987 I spent all summer breaks, school breaks, weekends, and spare time holed up in my bedroom playing solitaire (with real cards, people!) over and over again. And I loved it.

Today, I have solitaire and backgammon on my pocket pc, and I usually play one or both of them every single night once I get into bed. (I often play them again first thing in the morning as well) I love games like that, and find it relaxing, I guess.

Mexican Train Dominoes is one more game in this genre that I love. Plus it's speedy (which is an additional thrill for me). What am I gonna do?!?!

Why Stay Down? Crank it Up!

Here are some great tunes from Zeppelin to help me and you get up and moving toward the weekend. This first song is a family favorite for singing along in the car. Most kids can handle the first line, anyhow. :)

Laugh for the day

If you need a little laugh today, go check out Cake Wrecks. This site is full of some of the most unfortunate cakes you've ever laid eyes on. You have to see it to appreciate it.

My personal favorite was the tragedies that take place when people lack common sense (Literal LOLs)

A Fun Video

Several weeks ago when we were experiencing high winds from the hurricane in Texas my oldest son decided to try out what he called Land Surfing. Not sure if that's the best name for it, but I enjoyed recording this evidence that he's very much the same kid that he was when he was 8. :)

My Mom: Heart of a Boy Scout

While growing up, my mom always cooked big. There was always enough dinner for seconds, thirds, and friends to be invited to dinner at the last minute. (consequently we also always had plenty of leftovers, which I still think ROCKS)

When my mom would bake, she didn't just bake two dozen cookies or one pan of brownies. Instead, she had what we called Bake-a-Thons. She would make several different varieties of cookies, and lots of 'em. Our big chest freezer in the basement was always stocked up with baked goods.

You might think that we had a super large family or something. We didn't. 3 kids, 2 parents. (Disclaimer: Nobody was fat, either.) But my mom always knew how to be prepared, and do it up big.

She hasn't lost her knack for it, either.

While visiting my mom earlier this summer I decided that I simply had to document the comedic sizes of her bulk-store purchases. You will soon see why it is that, if there is a total economic breakdown, I will be heading straight to my mom's house, because I know that my whole family could survive there for a good, long time, based only on the items she has on hand right now.

Behold: Big Bags of Brown Sugar. I think these were five pounds each.

Four-and-a-half pound bags of chocolate chips!


Cooking oil by the gallon!
(Looks like you're gettin' low, Mom. Add Canola oil to the shopping list, please.)
Looks like we could make a decent amount of chocolate chip cookies with what we've got available. Right?

Now, if condiments are near and dear to your heart, you shant be disappointed, my pretties!


A gallon of soy sauce might be a lifetime supply for me, but at my mom's house, not so much.



Ditto on the five quarts of Worcestershire sauce.



Ketchup was available in these large sizes, in a six pack,
and in more regular sizes--they aim to please down there at my mom's. Southern hospitality and all, I guess.


Since my family of eight, plus my brother, sister, and other family members were visiting at the same time, we used a lot of disposable plates and utensils. This pack of 360 pieces of cutlery got us through the week in style, plus there will be plenty more for the next 4 or 5 visits!


At one point during the visit I was putting away leftovers and used up the last gallon ziploc bag in the drawer. For a moment I feared that we might not have any more, but then I remembered where I was, so I went a-hunting through the various pantry areas and...jackpot! There were just a few more ziploc bags available.


Like, only 152 gallon sized, and 216 quart size. Phew! Nothing to worry about here.


When all of the cooking, cleaning up, and fun is done, things are similarly worry-free in the laundry room. Jumbo jugs of laundry detergent promise to do 210 loads.


And the fabric softener has about 174 loads per container. She has no fear of scratchy clothing or towels there. No sirree!



Sadly, I did not get photo documentation of the contents of the extra fridge or the large upright freezer. I assure you that there are meals a-plenty in both.

The only thing that worries me.....Mom, do you have a generator?

Do you Kirtsy?

It's hard for me to keep up with all of the cool social networking things going on around the world wide web, but every now and then I get brave and jump on another bandwagon to see what it's all about.

I hated My Space, what with it's tacky looking layouts and trashy pictures everywhere. Get me outa there!

I joined Facebook awhile back, and that's safe and nice and mighty fun when an old friend from 7th grade pops back into my life!

I just started Twittering today (more on that later) so we'll see how that goes.

Kirtsy is something that I think is pretty durn cool. What's Kirtsy? it's like...your best friend who calls you up to say, "Hey did you see the great sale?!" or "Oh my goodness! You have to read this!" Basically, it's a way for women everywhere to point everybody in the direction of the stuff on the web that you find and love. A shout out for all your favorites. A courtesy call to everybody who hasn't already found what you love.

And, of course--you get to find out what everybody else is thinking is so mighty cool, too.

Go check it out. Get a feel for the thing. And then you can start Kirtsy-ing anything and everything that you love. :)

To Bring a Smile

This guy traveled to 42 countries to make this video. He has a pretty interesting web site that explains how he got this idea and how he was able to do all this traveling.

Places I would like to visit now that I have seen this:
Iceland, Portugal, the Netherlands.

Photo Mosaic Fun

I got this fun idea from Sooz.

The concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:
1. What is your first name? Dolly Mama
2. What is your favorite food right now? turkey and cheese sandwich
3. What high school did you go to? FHS
4. What is your favorite color? Dark Red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Heath Ledger (not so much a crush, just my favorite male actor of all time)
6. What is your favorite drink right now? water
7. What is your dream vacation? oceanside
8. What is your favorite dessert? something chocolate
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? peaceful and free
10. What do you love most in life? meaning and truth
11. What is one word that describes you? unique
12. What is your flickr name? I'm not tellin'

1. Stretching at Dolly Mama's, 2. Pizza Porn, 3. 07 10-06 FHS homecoming 130, 4. REDDEST ROSE, 5. In Memory of Heath Ledger, 6. Water is life!, 7. Sun Setting Over the Oceanside Pier, 8. Chocolate Chip Cookies, 9. Free your thoughts....., 10. Arghya - Varanasi, 11. Joy of life, 12. Girasoles acariciados por el viento .../ Sunflowers kissed the wind ... (Dedicada a mis 7500 visitantes/Dedicated to my 7500 visitors)

Pre-Games Fashion Show

So it's been a year since my husband and I first went to the Glasgow Highland Games, and the whole family has been looking forward to attending in 2008. Since we knew we'd be going back, we started accumulating some good Scottish garb for the children. Would you like to see...??

This first little Highlander is my 5 year old. It was kinda sunny that day, so he did a lot of squinting.

Pained squinting, to be exact....

And this is my 6 year old. Cute, eh?

My daughter was quite happy with her costume.

Wild clan of cute young men...

Here's one of all the kids together.

We had these kilts and my daughter's outfit made by some very sweet and talented young ladies. You can go to their web site here. I highly recommend them.

Tune in next time for actually photos from the Games!